29 June 2004.
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Here's an oddity, via Lorna's Shorts: New shop opens for Ecuadorian immigrants to send electric appliances to people back home. According to El Periodico here (Spanish only, pic), the shop doesn't sell for you to take things home. Instead, the Ecuadorian community (33,000 and growing - the largest immigration subgroup arriving in the city last year) go in, pay and then the fridge/washing machine/whatever gets sent to their relatives back home. Some are starting 6 month payment plans now, so that the appliance arrives as a Christmas present. Voltages are only set for Central/South America. The products arrive 48 hours after payment is completed. Anyone want to set up a WH Smiths for that in the UK to send me some magazines?
22 June 2004.
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Today's reason to rejoice. What with this and the word coming out of the making of the film, it seems that, rarely, everyone's doing things exactly as they should.
21 June 2004.
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"Where's it from?" From cashiers to library assistants, everyone always asks. My wallet currently holds six pieces of plastic or paper containing the eight letters of my surname. And it acts as a conversation starter all over the world.
More...
15 June 2004.
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For those who were wondering, the American Presidential wooden double, available for minor nations and graduations, has now been put on the roof to pick up wifi.
14 June 2004.
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According to The Guardian, "The home secretary, David Blunkett, warned today that police will come down 'like a tonne of bricks' on football fans who misbehave at home during the Euro 2004 tournament."
Given that they're in Europe, it seems only fair to use metric weights on them, which means that they've gotten off lightly. 16.047 kg lightly, in fact.
Meanwhile, my Portuguese correspondent tells me that ugly scenes involving professional English thugs, their own pepper bomb and a bus of innocent bystanders won't be helping the kingdom's reputation any, up in Lisbon. And so it goes on.
UPDATE: Trevor, as ever, sets me right.
10 June 2004.
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Some foul play afoot in Barcelona, where the enormously wealthy international chainstore Zara (or at least its Oysho label) has been accused of copying up-and-coming illustrators/graffiti artists Freaklub, a friendly and talented young pair whom I interviewed recently.
Click here to see the two versions - the new Zara clothing line and the figure that has been Freaklub's trademark for more than a year and a half - and make up your own mind. Bastards, the lot of them. Oh and spread the word would you, there's a good fellow?
06 June 2004.
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"There followed a surreal interlude, in which the Lady Reverend lugged a fat little girl out of a pew, who proceeded to produce a recorder and blow into it. Pain-ful-note-by-note, with an occasional macaw-like squawk. I couldn’t even identify the tune, but the key and appalling fact about it was that it repeated after about ten bars. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
"After a while, everyone was looking at each other, muttering ‘Fit’s thus a’ aboot?’; while the unfortunate child, thus condemned to do her recorder practice in public, was scarlet in the face, and rolling her eyes piteously at the Lady Reverend who, with a firm little nod, directed her, ‘and again, my dear.’ The Lord alone knows why. When at last she let her go and the victim had dived thankfully back into the shelter of a pew, the good lady informed us that we had just heard a performance of ‘Sleep, Baby, Sleep.’ -- Fortunately, he had."
The Deep North attends a christening.
06 June 2004.
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Newsdesigner.com has a great round-up of the US front pages and their treatment of Reagan. It certainly shows which images were cheap and widely available on the wires. But the Beaver County Times had already decided to design their newspaper in a 1940s style as a tribute to D-Day. Did Reagan's death make them ditch the design frippery? Did it heck (pdf). Good on 'em, I say.
Sidepoint: MeFi reports that Reagan was apparently just one of a number of celebrities to use the Autopen.
03 June 2004.
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Birmingham City, for example, were stunned during contract negotiations when Jehovah's representatives insisted on a contract clause that banned the other members of the team from making any money from "graven image rights". "He didn't want supporters at St Andrews to adore anyone else but him," Steve Bruce recalls of the aborted deal. "It was totally unbelievable."
Best. Football. Column. Ever.
03 June 2004.
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“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t think of you as a person. I thought of you as this Google creation, this Lara Croft character."
Which is where the trouble often starts. At times it's like reading a car crash, but Alexandra Polier's account of being the ex-intern (now AP journalist) accused of sleeping with John Kerry gets fascinating when she starts hunting down those who wrote about her, trying to unravel where the rumour began.
02 June 2004.
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Things we need more of: classic film references in football celebrations.
01 June 2004.
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"A good library collection should have something to offend everyone," said Jan Bojda, head of children's services at the library. "If they don't, they are not doing their job."
Amen to that. Just for future reference, I feel the same about weblogs, newspapers and people.
(Quoted in the Chicago Tribune; get your login here. Found on Librarian.net)
